


life can bloom when something breaks

by slaymouse



Series: you’ve got time to figure it out [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fem!Michael, Gen, Parental Abuse, Trans Character, Transphobia, Verbal Abuse, trans!michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaymouse/pseuds/slaymouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitch fights to keep her voice steady, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat. This isn’t the way this was supposed to happen, she thinks. This wasn’t supposed to happen at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	life can bloom when something breaks

Dancing around her room and absently humming along to the radio, Michelle applies mascara carefully to her lashes. Her parents are out and she won’t be home until they’ve long gone to bed, so she figures why not; puts on a light face of makeup from the stash in the back of her bedside drawer. She even allows herself the pleasure of wearing a padded bra under her top.

Her hair falls just above her shoulders in loose curls and she has to admit, Barb does know some pretty good hair growth remedies. Overall, she smiles brightly when she looks into the mirror and decides that yeah, deciding to go to the Valentine’s Day party Meg is throwing is a good idea.

 

 

It’s past midnight when Ryan drops Mitch off in front of her house, headlights off as per her request.

“Thanks Ry!” she whispers, and the boy chuckles quietly, waving her off before driving away. Michelle watches his taillights disappear into the night, treks up the driveway.

She slips inside the door, keys rattling loudly in the otherwise silent house. A moment later, there’s a creak from the living room of someone getting up and she curses. Her sleeve darts to her mouth, wiping frantically at her scarlet lip gloss.

“Alexander?” her mother speaks from the doorway.

Eloquently, Mitch flounders for a second, “...fuck.”

 

 

“Alexander,” her mother begins, “what’s the meaning of this?” she’s still in her robe and if her glare wasn’t sour enough to curdle milk, Mitch would laugh.

She says nothing, however, and sits at the dining room table tensely, her foot shaking against the chair. Her father stands just behind her, arms crossed, and she can feel his stare burning the back of her neck.

“Answer your mother, Alexander!” he shouts, and Michelle flinches visibly

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she says quietly, hunching in on herself further.

“You mean to tell me that you have nothing to say for this-” she gestures to Mitch’s face and chest- “mess? I find that hard to believe,” her mother huffs again, pacing the floor across from her daughter. She seems tired almost.

Again, Mitch says nothing. Suddenly, her father in around the table and wow, she’s liked it better when she couldn’t see him. He’s seething mad.

“How about we begin with the why, hm? Why are you making a mockery of our family?” he snarls.

Michelle just about begins sobbing at that, but holds her jaw firm as tears silently slip down her cheeks, undoubtedly smearing khol in their path. She takes a deep breath, “It’s not a mockery. This is who I am.”

Her mother stops pacing, looks at Michelle with a renewed venom in her gaze, “What do you mean this is who you are?”

Mitch fights to keep her voice steady, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat. _This isn’t the way this was supposed to happen_ , she thinks. _This wasn’t supposed to happen at all._

“I’m transgender.”

And it’s like a bomb goes off.

While the situation beforehand was nowhere near calm, even by the toxic standards of living in such a intolerant household, the chaos that sets in afterwards is mind boggling. Her father begins to yell and her mother sob, but all Mitch can find the ability to do is duck her head and cry.

She wants to lash out; to scream and kick and punch and curse, but can’t find the ability to do much else than cry.

“You want to repeat that for me? I seem to have heard you incorrectly,” her father yells, inches from her face. Mitch shakes and sniffles, wiping frantically at her eyes. Vaguely, she realizes she can hear her mother weeping in the kitchen.

“I’m-” her voice breaks off, and she tries again. “I’m not a boy; I’m not Alexander.”

The glare she receives for that is murderous but she keeps her head raised, bloodshot eyes and runny nose be damned, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” she chokes. “My name isn’t Alexander. It’s Michelle.”

As her father flies towards her in a flurry of rage, Mitch barely has the chance to stand up before she’s been pinned against the wall. The chair she’d been sitting in seconds ago clatters to the floor with a deafening sound. There’s a hole, and a fist in the drywall beside her head.

She swallows hard against the hand clutching her windpipe, not tight enough to restrict her breathing, but enough to remind her that it could. That her father holds her life in his hands.

Suddenly, she wants nothing more than out of this house; away from these people.

“Get off of me,” she whimpers, fighting to get away feebly as fingers twitch against her trachea.

Her father glares for a moment, almost contemplative. Around her, the world fades away, except for her father’s studying gaze, as though she’s some sort of alien to be inspected. Briefly, she registers her mother screaming at her husband to let her son go; charming.

Suddenly, the hand squeezes and is gone just as quickly and Mitch drops like a stone. She holds her own hand to a tender bruise forming on her clavicle when she hears it, an unforgiving whisper:

“Then get the hell out of my house.”

 

 

She thinks it’s about two o’clock when she stumbles into Lindsay’s driveway, a duffle bag thrown haphazardly over her shoulder as she hiccups and chokes to breathe. The walk across town in the middle of February has made her lungs burn as she struggles down from an anxiety attack, gasping for breath in the frigid air.

Unceremoniously, she walks onto the porch and puts her bag down at her feet. She only has to knock once and a moment later, the door opens and Lindsay is blinking back at her with bleary eyes. When she sees the state of her best friend, however, she shocks awake in an instant.

“Mitch, what the fuck happened?” she asks, alarmed as she stumbles outside, pulling the taller into a tight hug. She accepts the gesture greatly, wrapping her arms tightly around Lindsay as she sobs.

“Got home from the party… Mom waited up… They found out…” she gasps and she buries her face into the fabric of her friend’s shirt. She can barely hear Lindsay gasp over the sound of her own heart racing. “They threw me out, Linds. Can I…?”

“Of course you can, idiot,” she says affectionately. “You’ve always got a safe space here, you know that…”

The shorter of the two redheads ushers her best friend into the house, holding her tightly as if she’s about to fall apart, to collapse in her fingers. They pass through the living room, illuminated by the glow of the television and on the couch, Lindsay’s mother stirs.

“Linds…?” she calls groggily and Mitch freezes. The Tuggey’s go to the same church as Mitch’s parents and if her Lindsay’s mom decides that she’s a heathen too-

“Hi mom,” Lindsay is talking to her mother, leaned against the doorway without a nerve alight in her body, “you remember Michelle right?”

“Michelle?” the woman frowns, sitting up and wiping the sleep from her eyes, “you’ve never mentioned Michelle?”

“Well,” Lindsay rubs awkwardly at the back of her neck, looking back to Mitch as though she hadn’t planned to have this conversation. At least, not now; not in front of Mitch. “She used to go by Alexander?”

“Oh,” the woman says, finally looking at Michelle fully. She looks the tall girl onceover, then smiles tiredly, “Welcome, sweetheart.”

And something in Mitch’s chest drops, tears welling up in her eyes as she smiles back, “Hi, Mrs. Tuggey.”

Lindsay looks fondly between her mother and friend, her gaze happy as the two regard each other in good means, even as tired and stressed out as they are, respectively. Then she turns back to her mom, “Uh, it’s alright if Mitch stays here for awhile, right? She’s having some issues at home,” she flubs, a shared look promising a better explanation later.

“Of course, she can stay as long as she’d like,” Mrs. Tuggey says and both girls smiles from the doorway.

“Thanks mom!” Lindsay chirps, heading upstairs and gesturing for Mitch to follow. She’s halfway to the stairs when she suddenly stops, and looks back to Lindsay’s mom.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Tuggey,” she says, smile tight but genuine.

Rising from the couch, the brunette woman approaches Mitch carefully, but wraps her in a hug when she reaches her nonetheless. The redhead hugs back, much to her surprise, “It’s no problem Michelle.

“By the way,” she says as they pull apart and she begins to head back to her own room, “I like your hair.”

Mitch smiles- really, truly smiles- and thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’ll be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> title from Foster the People's "Nevermind"


End file.
